NEW DELHI: Axiom-4 crew members, including Shubhanshu Shukla, were welcomed with hugs and drinks as they stepped into the International Space Station on Thursday. The newly launched spacecraft — the fifth in the Dragon series and named Grace — successfully completed a soft docking with the International Space Station at 16.01 while orbiting above the North Atlantic Ocean.“At 6:31 am EDT (4:01 IST) on Thursday, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the International Space Station for the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory, Axiom Mission 4,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) announced in a statement.

Following the spacecraft’s soft docking, a secure connection — known as hard-mating — was established as 12 sets of hooks locked the two orbiting structures together, enabling communication and power links to be activated. It took around two hours to complete the hatch-opening procedures before the astronauts could enter the space station.Shubhanshu Shukla has become the second Indian in space, following Rakesh Sharma’s mission in 1984. Joining him on the Axiom-4 mission are Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, the second Polish astronaut since 1978, and Tibor Kapu, the second Hungarian to fly to space after a 45-year gap. The crew launched from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre on Wednesday en route to the International Space Station.